Friday night is opening night for Sunderland. After ten years away, they are back in the Championship, taking on Derby County at the Stadium of Light. They are not ready. Manager Simon Grayson says as much.

It is one of the ridiculous aspects of modern football that the Black Cats have six games to negotiate before the transfer window shuts and Grayson can say with confidence what it is he will have to work with for the rest of the year.

Even with 12 senior players having left, the departures have not finished. Grayson wisely refuses to say how many more players he is looking to add but it is certain his cut-price recruitment drive is not yet at an end either.

Given that, he is not afraid to admit he will be going into a tough opening month – Norwich City, Sheffield Wednesday and Leeds United are others lying in wait – unprepared.

“Our squad and every squad in the country will not be ready until the end of August because you never know where you will be with your group of players,” says Grayson, who unlike many members of his squad knows exactly what a Championship campaign entails. “Every player at every club would be available to move on, that’s why I am a big fan of the window shutting before the season starts. Then I would say we were ready because I know what group of players we have to work with. That isn’t the case.

Sunderland's manager Simon Grayson (Image: Sunderland AFC)

“Where we are in good shape is the work we have done on the training pitch. What the players have taken from Saturday’s game (a 5-0 drubbing at home to Celtic), that was a game where anything that did go wrong could go wrong, hopefully those things won’t happen again.”

After ten years in the land of milk and honey, reality has hit Sunderland with a furious vengeance.

Years of poor spending has caught up with them, to the extent that the seven players recruited have come for a combined £1.2m – at least in terms of transfer fees. Considering neighbours Middlesbrough have spent in excess of £30m on strikers alone and Wolverhampton Wanderers have paid half that just for Ruben Neves, Sunderland’s time in the Championship might last a little longer than their last two stints, which amounted to three years in total.

They do have plenty of players used to operating at a higher level but the recent history of the second tier suggests that is not all it is cracked up to be. The reality is the Black Cats are probably more likely to get out of the division this season by the back door than the front.

Even the appointment of Grayson, a manager with a cast-iron track record of promotions from League One, is a recognition of the new austerity sweeping through the Stadium of Light. He has to play the part of realist without going too far as David Moyes did into doom-monger territory.

“This football club has high expectancy levels and rightly so,” reflects Grayson, who in the past has had to pick the likes of Leeds United up off the floor. “Also there is a sense of realism.

“As I said from day one, we have a respectful budget. We have not got the biggest and we have not got the lowest. Ultimately we are not in a position other clubs are. We are still an ex-Premier League club with some good players on our hands.

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“We want to be getting in the top reaches of the division. We want to be getting back up like every other team in the Championship. We have got that ambition. But also people realise there is not that money to spend, but we will put together a group to be competitive and do the best we can.”

If Moyes went into the manager’s office expecting better backing than he got – certainly in January – Grayson did so with his eyes wide open.

“That’s where we are as a football club,” he says having signed a free agent, three loanees and three players from the bargain basement. “We can’t go and spend millions of pounds on players now and I knew that when I came into the club.

“I also knew I could work with the players we’ve got, who are decent enough. I also knew the new ones who have come in would give us something different. They want to be here for the right reasons – they are not coming here for the money.

“They want to play and run around and do well. We’ve brought seven players in and probably spent about a million pounds. When you’ve got (Aiden) McGeady, and the boys from Everton (loanees Brendan Galloway and Tyias Browning), who are good young hungry players, then we are getting where we need to be. Ultimately we still have more work to do.

“(We need) a few more. I think it will be dictated by who stays and who goes. That’s why if the window was shutting tomorrow I would know where I am and who we have available. If somebody leaves we will have to replace them in that position. I know there are still a couple of players at least that I need.”